2 Week Before First Infection
by Bert the Nomad
Summary: A Testament to the lives of the Infected and Survivors before 1st infection and an account of the sweet transition into the screaming apocalypse that turned a city into Hell, warped mankind into a ravenous horde, and left a certain 4 individuals for Dead.
1. The Smoker

Author's Note: New story, tells the perspectives of all your favorite characters living out their lives two weeks before 1st infection and tracks them all the way until two weeks after. It allows you to see the lives of the Special Infected before they were infected, the city before it was engulfed by the pandemic, and the individual journey of the survivors before their paths crossed, before they were engulfed in a world of chaos, before they were…

**Left 4 Dead**.

Chapter One

The Smoker

**Two Weeks before First Infection…**

….

_Bet she's tight._

_Bet you she's tight and slick down there. That's what I bet. Hot too. Hot and tight and slick. Yeah. Like a rich guy's wallet. Like an ironed leather glove. I bet that's what it feels like. _

_Sleek. _

_Hot. _

_Oh, and she wants me. I can tell. I can smell it on her. She wants me down there just as much I want her. _

Randy R. Wick was smiling when the fist connected a ninth time, sinking in just below his left eye socket, throwing his world into a vibrating pulse of hot fuzzy colors. He wheezed, gagging on something hot and runny in the back of his throat as his head whip-lashed from the blow. Blood had smeared black and sticky across the entire right half of his face, flaking and peeling under the swollen blue swells of bruised skin from beneath. But he didn't look away. Randy's mismatching eyes never drifted from _her_, his yellow and red grin never fading even as he wheezed again and spat out a chipped tooth in a rose-petal of blood. When he was on his knees so none of the men around him noticed his listing gaze. None of them could see him staring. He liked that. They were talking but he couldn't hear them anymore. Their murmurs were lost in the vast movie theatre of Randy's mind, murmuring voices in the nosebleed seats, taking nothing away from the screen. From the secret angle Randy enjoying right now as he watched silently in the booth. Right next to the rattling projector itself.

On his knees.

Cowering.

Wheezing.

And….secretly….peeking up. Peeking up between the punches at her shiny, leather boots. Her winding black and purple tights that roamed all the way up her candy-cane legs…all the way to that secret darkness hidden in the shadow of her Minnie-skirt. Making him guess. Making him wonder.

_Bet you it's hot. Bet's you it's blazing right now. Just wait till I get done with it baby. Just wait until I get my hands on it…_

He didn't know her real name, or how she came to become the arm-candy for such a South-side prick as Paulie 'the Wall' Briggs who was beating the shit out of him right now. She'd been with him for the past three months now. Quiet, shy, and always there to watch Paulie work. Sometimes the Wall called her Candy.

Candy.

Randy liked it.

Candy Candy Candy.

Made him ponder. Made him think.

_Y'know, I bet you she's sweet there too. Like melted skittles on a car seat. Like sugar water in a spoon. Just a bit more…just gotta lean in a bit more…_

Something in his cheek gave way. His left eye clouded over red and began to drool. The Wall was saying something, his booming voice ripping through his mental motion picture like lightning down the screen.

"Little sugar prick, little tootsie-scuz! You still the big man now, huh? You still the big man? You still think you can steal from me?" His voice began to fade, overwhelmed by a shell-shock ringing as another blow cracked the side of his head. The Wall was a rightie and was standing on Wick's left the entire beating. All his punches had primarily targeted that half of his face. His left ear had swelled shut two minutes ago. Maybe permanently this time.

Randy used this blow to inch forward, skidding in his faded baby blue-jeans. He rocked forward further, craned his neck. Grinned.

_Hello, hello Randy's Candy…_

Candy didn't notice. She was on her phone, standing just three feet away. Her guazy purple-lined eyes never once meeting his. Never once in the 14 separate occasions she'd seen him in these circumstances had she ever looked at him. Randy didn't mind. He would have found it distracting.

"You still awake you lanky shit-stain, huh? You fallin' over cuz you're tired? Cuz you needin' a _nap_ now?"

Randy spared his gaze for a second to glance over at the Wall, standing in front of the sun like the Colossus of Rhodes, a marble body of gym-inflated muscle pressing against the second-skin of a dirty wife-beater. He glanced up just in time to catch one final punch to his already weeping left eye. It made a sounded like meat on pavement and felt like it too. His world fogged over again, obscuring his view and wheeling his vision to that of the ghastly November sky as he landed hard on his back.

The Wall squatted down, leered into his good ear. "Maybe now you'll remember to get that two-grand you owe me under my apartment door. Maybe know you'll realize just who you're messing with when you mess with The Wall. You tussle with me, you tussle with the best_. _You hear that Wick? The _best_!"

Randy began wheezing again, but he was smiling inside. Laughing. Wiggling. The world grew fuzzy, he began to black out in the middle of the basketball court.

The Wall gave Randy two more kicks to the stomach before someone in his circle of buddies glanced over his shoulder at the distant howl of police sirens. "Hey, Paulie, let's get moivin' already, huh? I think old man Hills called the cops on us again."

The Wall dragged a greased forearm across his forehead, panting and grinned. "Yeah, Wheezing Wick here's learned his lesson for today, _haven't yah_?" He kicked Randy in the side again with enough force to roll him onto his stomach. He began dry heaving, head sideways on the asphalt. The Wall turned to Candy. "Hey babe, hang up. We're bouncing."

Candy's eyes lolled over for a moment, closed briefly in the slightest of sighs, then complied, her long black nails tossing some of her hair behind her ear as she soundlessly snapped her phone shut. She stepped quickly through the impressive sunrise of Randy's spit and blood, the stilettos of her high-heel boots making a series of crimson ellipses on the pavement as she strolled off.

In the corner of his pariff, Randy caught one last hazy glimpse up her skirt in his peripheral before she vanished into the murk and darkness of his shattered left eye.

And Randy R. Wick smiled.

_Betcha one day I'll have it._ He wheezed before drifting into unconsciousness._ Betcha one day I'll take it. Like Candy from a baby, I'll have it…_

_Randy's Candy_

_…_

_…_

_…_

"Death opens unknown doors. It is most grand to die."

_-Pompey the Great_


	2. The Veteran

Author's Note: The next chapter, enjoy!

**Left 4 Dead**

Chapter Two

The Veteran

**2 Weeks Before First Infection…**

_And I'm having a shitty day._

For assistant manager Hank Pembrook, life in the big city had prepared him for a lot.

As the big city often did.

In his 48 years of life beneath the radar, the city had robbed him four times, twice at knife-point, once at gun-point, it had taken one of his kidneys and put two stones in the other, got him hitched consecutively to two cock-block wives the latter of which took his apartment in the settlement and ran over his dog on the way out of town, and as a topper somehow managed to turn a horse-race into a temporary albeit terrifying debt to the mob. He hadn't been back to that track in 3 years.

Pembrook had lived in the city for 48 years.

It showed.

Over time the bone-chilling breezes of the rainy streets and the self-centered cruelty of his fellow man had slowly ebbed away at Hank Pembrook's character like sandpaper on ice….but it'd also shown him the ropes. It taught him the rules of the game. Through his wilted acquaintances and knee-buckling intimacies Manager Hank Pembrook slowly developed an unmatched prowess in the art of reading people. And yes, it _was_ an art. One of the few arts left in the icy grease-trap that was this city. Being good at reading people could save your life.

Especially in a town like this.

Especially when you were a job-interviewer.

Especially now.

_A shitty day indeed…_

"So," Pembrook straightened his papers on his desk, readjusting his glasses on an off-centered nose. "It says here that you're from Wyoming originally. Nice state Wyoming, got some family near there. Get Christmas letters all the time."

The man across the interviewing table didn't respond. He hadn't touched his coffee in ten minutes. He hadn't even moved.

Pembrook cleared his throat, scratched his chin.

He knew he was a man, an _older_ man. They'd talked on the phone last Tuesday. The man had arranged the meeting for seven a.m. and arrived at six . When he entered Pembrook's office, he'd slanted the reading light away from him as he sat down, giving only a grizzled, angular profile for Pembrook to look at against the glass panel of his door. From the window a horizontal beam of light from the morning sun outside slanted across the lap of the older man, illuminating a pair of tired, weathered hands. Occasional the left one —_always_ the left one— would drift up into the shadows to tap a bit of ash from the end of a glowing red cigarette that drooped limply from his lips, glowing in the darkness like an idle radio. He'd entered with it lit.

That is the only time he moved.

Sometimes, when the man would take a drag, Pembrook could make out a red-hued detail of the man's face, occasionally catching the reflection of a pair of glassy blue marble eyes embedded deeply in a puckered, pulled face.

"I see you've worked in a number of alternative jobs as well. Is that true?"

"Yes, you could say that."

Gravel. Pembrook could hear it in his voice now that they weren't on the phone. It sounded so much thicker in person, like a scratched record being played on by a heavy dull needle. Pembrook had an aunt who was a smoker, had that same gravely tone. She was a hefty brunette with hoop earrings, high-heel pumps and a thick Brooklyn accent sounding all the more grimy and delicious with that black tar built up in the back of her lungs. She died in her bathtub two weeks before the Christmas of '04, naked except for a still smoking cigarette in her hand left hand. Doctors said that it was the smoking that'd done it. She was 43 years old.

This man looked like he'd already crested sixty.

Jesus, he must've have lungs like the Good-Year Blimp.

"But it also says that you haven't held any of them down for very long. According to this you've had six other jobs and all lasted less than a month. Three weeks at one, two weeks two weeks at another, one here lasted less than nine days…. How can we feel comfortable that your interest in our company won't be as short lived as the others?"

There was a pause across the table as the man took a long, crinkling drag on the cigarette, lighting up like a neon light. Pembrook caught his eyes again. Glassy, hazed, but as sleek and cold as razors. When he spoke long streams of serpentine smoke rolled into the light. He sounded tired. "I just…needed to find the right job, Mr. Pembrook. For me. I've been around for a while. It'd be nice to find a job that relaxes me. I have a lot to offer. You won't regret your decision."

Pembrook frowned. Something about the way he puffed that damn cigarette gave him the inkling that he'd said that exact statement before. Six times as a matter or fact. "Well I can't promise anything, sir, but that is assuring to hear." He glanced down at the paper again. "You got a wife at all? Kids?"

"Nope."

"Any immediate family you're living with?"

"I live alone."

"Are you capable of working long hours?"

"I can go three days without sleep if that's what your asking."

"Good, good. How about your crisis skills?"

Those baby-blue marble eyes blinked slowly. "Come again?"

Pembrook glanced up and smiled.

"Now, I know this job may not _seem_ like much, but believe me, it can be a real hot-zone sometimes, _especially_ during the holidays. What we want to know is are you capable of handling yourself in emergencies?"

Those old, sea-captain hands idly folded.

"Yes." he said finally. "Yes I am."

Pembrook nodded, his eyes drifting down to the last sentence under his personal information. He froze.

_Oh Christ, _Pembrook almost groaned aloud.

_He's a vet._

For a job like this, a vet was every job interviewer's worst nightmare. Pembrook was good at reading people but it didn't take a Sigmund Freud to recognize that tell-tale psychological mind game they'd play with you with their green berets and camouflage pants when sitting across your desk. Vets who went prowling for jobs like _this_ were the ones that didn't have the family or the income to turn anywhere else and where banking on melting their employer's patriotic heart with that bullet they took to the ass-cheek while carrying their CO' out of an enemy hotzone before a Napalm strike. Well, it wouldn't work on Pembrook. No siree. His great grand-daddy came to this country a poor Irish immigrant. He lived a poor Irish immigrant, survived the trenches of Normandy a poor Irish immigrant, and returned to America just in time to die alone a poor Irish immigrant. One more than one occasion in his career, Pembrook had turned down veterans ten years this man's senior and had tossed pocket change into their Styrofoam cups as he passed them on the street the next morning. If this guy wanted a job he'd have to earn it fair and square.

"It says here that you also had some….military experience, correct?"

At this the man's tone changed. The gravel of all those cigarettes suddenly faded, replaced with something older, stronger, but at the same time infinitely youthful. A voice before the tar and gravel. Before the fog in his eyes. Pembrook easily recognized it as the voice of a military man. A voice that'd tasted blood, smoke, mud, and glory within seconds of each other.

Christ, here it comes…

"Yes I have." The man said cleanly. "Served under a Lieutenant George K. Harker 5th Platoon. I was stationed in Da Nang and fought the Charlies for five years. Served two tours Got an honorable discharge after a 'nade scrambled my knee up something good in the TET offensive. Still got the scars. It looks like a star."

Pembrook nodded quickly not really listening, his eyes already scanning down to the next bullet on the paper.

_Oh this keeps getting better and better…_

"And it _also s_ays here you've been diagnosed with mild PTSD, is that true?"

There was a pause, then the gravel slowly trickled back into the man's voice, sounding low and unhappy once more. He removed his cigarette from his mouth and crushed it next to his coffee cup, twisting it like a heel on a bug. "Nobody walks out of Nam without it, mister. It's the boys who do that you've oughta keep an eye on."

"That's good, sir, but you didn't answer my questi-…."

The old man dug around in his vest pocket, holding up his hand as he removed a crinkled packet of smokes and tapped one from the end.

"I'm fine, I'm fine." He grinned, biting the cigarette in picket-fence teeth. "Just keeps me from sleepin' sometime. Doc's been giving me pills for 'bout a year now, I'm fine. Nothin' sinister."

He flicked a tiny, metallic lighter on from one of his many pockets, leaned forward and cupped his left hand over the flame as he lit the tip of his cig like he was outside. He took a drag, his eyes never leaving Pembrook.

The assistant manager could feel his gaze, could tell that he could see his discomfort. Could sense his hesitancy. This guy had worked and lost 6 jobs already and attended god-knows how many interviews. He knew when he was losing ground.

Pembrook glanced back down….sighed.

It was common knowledge of the business world that passing jobs off to individuals with any history of mental health problems was just a lawsuit waiting to happen. It was like ordering food from a down-town Mexican restaurant. One bad decision and you and everyone eating from your plate gets their asses completely destroyed. Putting faith in other people was a risk. Pembrook couldn't afford that risk right now. He was good at reading people and this guy was about as vague as a pop-up book. War had a way of branding the mind. Turning strong, young men into broken relics of smudged metals and troubled memories waiting until a clogged artery or sleepy heart finally retires them permanently from the streets of the nation they sacrificed their sanity to protect. Sometimes Pembrook forgot that this city had no bias. It screwed _everybody_.

He hesitated. Sighed again.

From across the table, the man's eyes drank in Pembrook's every movement, those wide, ghostly windows never missing a thing as Pembrook bit his lip and mad up his mind.

_It wasn't worth the risk. This city didn't allow the luxury of risk._

He paused, glanced at the paper, then up to the man sitting across from him, puffing away.

"Well," he smiled like a bastard. "I'd first like to thank you for coming in today and talking with me, your résumé is truly a testament to your experience and skill as a hard worker and a patriot for your country," He paused, scratched his nose. The man watched soundlessly. "However…..I don't think that your expertise is what this company needs at this point in time and it wouldn't be fair if I let your military experience influence-"

"Oh, cut the shit, son."

Pembrook stopped. Blinked. "Ex-cuse me?"

There was an exceptionally long exhale of smoke. "You heard me, cut the shit. Just cut it out." The man calmly removed the cigarette and stood up, Pembrook noticed the faintest hints of a limp in his left leg. "I don't want this job just as much as you don't want to give it to me. I admit that. I admit that I'd rather be back in Nam peeling the gout out of my foot with a knife than be stuck in a vest shaking hands with your customers, but damn-it, I just don't have a choice anymore."

His chipped, angular form stepped forward, strong sea-captain hands wrapping around the corners of Pembrook's desk, digging in so hard he could hear the wood groan. The assistant manager could see the man's gaze harden, his ghastly blue eyes burning through Pembrook's dull brown ones like hot embers through silk. "You think I have PTSD, boy? You're damn _right_ I have PTSD! It's the only thing keeping me from going _crazy_ in this country. Don't talk to me with your balls in your pocket and pat-on-the-back-bull-shit. Don't think for a moment you have the _right_ to talk to me like that."

Pembrook's cheeks were flustered as he stood up. "Sir, I respect your position sir, but consider what's _fair_ to the other potential-"

"Can it, Sally!"

Pembrook promptly canned it.

"I don't have the patience to be talked down to, son! If that grenade had landed three feet to my left my pelvis would have been blown up through my brain and I would have gotten my name carved into a wall and gotten eternal niche in the history of this nation, but instead I shook hands with the president, got a purple heart, and am now have to scrounge for money because little _chicken-shits_ like you won't give me a job in a _god-damn _department store! _And you want to lecture me about being fair?_ Spineless _turds_ like you just twist my gut, boy. Why, even my daughter knew that-"

And then

…quite suddenly…

the man stopped.

Just…stopped.

Pembrook's bladder continued trembling as he shrank in his seat, expecting another outburst, expecting the man to leap up on his desk, hang him from the ceiling do whatever the hell those vets did to people over in Nam.

But he didn't.

Instead, like the touch of death, all emotion temporarily drained from the old man's face like life from a rose. His brow lifted, lips gently parted, and that pulled, taught face slowly relaxed. He let go of Pembrook's desk, glanced downwards, his left hand unconsciously placing the cigarette between his lips again.

He sat down.

Cleared his throat.

When he spoke, he spoke quietly.

"I didn't serve half a decade over seas, watch boys too young to shave have their brains shot out and have a pound of metal removed from my knee just to be turned away from a job like this. Please, for the sake of an old soldier's pride, give me this one favor. Please."

Pembrook was still cowered in the bowels of his chair like a skidmark on a pair of skivvies, but once he saw that this man's temper had cooled down, he eased slowly himself back up in his chair, letting his pulse ease up. He swallowed hard, his still shaky handing running through his thinning blonde hair.

"We'll…we'll definitely keep in touch." Pembrook said finally. "I'll try to…pull some strings. Or something. I'll…see what I can do."

The man nodded his head. Said genuinely, "Thank you."

Pembrook nodded nervously, pushing over a piece of paper as cautiously as a man pushing a bone to a pit-bull. "Here's a number you can reach us at if…if you have any further questions or anything." he cleared his throat. "Though I think we've…. covered all the information we needed to cover already. Oh, and, uhm, take this…" He reached beneath his desk and slid over a shiny plastic tag to the man who stopped it with a thin, pointed finger. He held it up. Scrutinized it.

**Welcome to Shop-N-Go Supercenter. **

**My name is .................!**

**How can I help you today?**

Pembrook grinned weakly. "It'll be your nametag should you get this job. We go by first names only. I have you marked down as William as of right now. Is…is that good?"

"Bill."

Pembrook flinched. "Say again?"

The nametag went spinning back across the table back into Pembrook's lap, the man's glassy, starry-night eyes still cold in the glow of the cigarette as he took another slow, deliberate drag as he headed for the door.

"My name's Bill. It's what my buddies all used to call me."

Pembrook waited until the door clicked shut before letting loose a huge sigh over the back of the chair.

_A shitty day indeed…_

_…_

_…_

_…_

"Death is one of two things. Either it is annihilation, and the dead have no consciousness of anything; or, as we are told, it is really a change: a migration of the soul from this place to another."

-Socrates


End file.
